The present invention relates to a brush having bristles wherein the bristles are retracted into a housing by means of a collapsing handle Such handle has a multi-purpose of providing a handle that can be comfortably gripped while brushing the hair or other object and which controls the extension and retraction of the bristles into a housing. When retracted the handle is collapsed providing a compact brush that is easier to carry and store because of its minimal size, there are no snagging bristles exposed and no hair is shed during carrying or storage.
The prior art discloses a number of retractable brushes but to my knowledge none of them have been entirely satisfactory because they did not have a handle or when it did have a handle, the handle increased the size of the brush and made it bulky to carry and store Further, many of the prior art retractable brushes do not provide a self-cleaning feature Further, others have provided for retracting the bristles but when retracted the bristles are exposed so that when the user reaches into the carrying case such as a women's purse the bristles stab the fingers. Also, exposed bristles damage other things carried in the same container.
Other retractable brushes are extremely complicated and made up of a number of moving parts that are expensive to manufacture and assemble. Thus, such retractable brushes have found substantially no commercial success or very little commercial success because of the cost involved in the manufacture of the parts and the assembly thereof.